1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dubbing apparatus for audio equipment which reproduces music information from optical discs and digital audio tapes and records it on magnetic tapes such as cassette tapes.
2. Prior Art
A dubbing apparatus is known, in which a plurality of pieces of music recorded on a compact disc (or CD) are reproduced one after another by a CD player and recorded on magnetic tapes such as cassette tapes.
The CD recorded time and the recordable time of magnetic tape seldom coincide an this gives rise to the following inconveniences. When the CD recorded time is longer than the recordable time of the magnetic tape, the music being recorded into tape is interrupted halfway. When the CD recorded time is shorter than the recordable time of the magnetic tape, a relatively long, unrecorded portion remains at the end of the tape.
To solve this problem some apparatuses have been proposed. To cite one example, there is an audio equipment (Japanese Patent Preliminary Publication No. Showa 63-131390) which compares the CD recorded time and the recordable time of magnetic tape and displays the number of pieces of music that can be completely recorded into the magnetic tape as well as the recordable time. Another example is a compact disc player with a record assist function (Japanese Patent Preliminary Publication No. Showa 63-161581), which displays information indicating whether the pieces of music selected by the user can be completely recorded into the magnetic tape.
With the above conventional apparatuses, the user can have the information about the number of pieces of music that can be recorded into magnetic tape, the recordable time, and whether the selected pieces of music can completely be recorded into the magnetic tape. Despite this advantage, when the CD recorded time is found longer, even slightly, than the recordable time of the magnetic tape, the user has to replace the tape with other magnetic tape with a longer recordable time. In that case, however, a long unrecorded portion may result at the end of the tape.